Taming a Wild Forest 



331 



ing; others are weak and may live only 

 a short time. Foresters study the com- 

 position of timber stands and develop 

 cutting practices to fit particular con- 

 ditions. 



Some forests such as those com- 

 posed chiefly of ponderosa pine 

 respond well to partial cutting, or 

 selective logging. Trees marked for 

 cutting are those that are economically 

 ripe and those that are weakened by 

 insects, disease, or fire. The younger, 

 healthy trees are left for further 

 growth. Thus, the poor-risk and ma- 

 ture trees are removed over the whole 

 area; a full forest cover is left, with 

 only small openings. In these, the 

 young trees become established, and 

 the production of future timber crops 

 is uninterrupted. 



Selective logging has been done in 

 Douglas-fir forests. The results have 

 not always been good. It is difficult to 

 remove large trees from these dense 

 stands without serious injury to some 

 of the trees which it is planned to leave. 

 Loss from windfall may be serious. On 

 some stands, careful application will 

 produce desirable results, but often it 

 is not practicable to cut the old-growth 

 Douglas-fir stands on the basis of se- 

 lecting individual trees to be removed. 

 That is very true on steep slopes. 



Another key reason for not using the 

 true selective-logging system in old- 

 growth Douglas-fir hinges upon a char- 

 acteristic of Douglas-fir seedlings : The 

 young trees will not tolerate shade. 

 Unless the openings made by logging 

 are one-half acre or larger in size, 

 Douglas-fir seedlings will not thrive 

 and the Douglas-fir stand will not re- 

 produce itself. And if enough trees are 

 logged selectively to open the stand 

 sufficiently to insure Douglas-fir re- 

 production, the danger of serious wind- 

 fall becomes excessive. 



Workers in the Douglas-fir region 

 therefore turned to other means of 

 accomplishing the same purposes 

 area selection, which also is termed 

 patch cutting, logging by staggered 

 settings, or clear cutting by small 

 blocks. Whatever the name, the prin- 



ciple was the same to clear-cut small 

 areas of timber and to leave reserve or 

 seed strips surrounding the cut-over 

 areas. Leaving solid reserve strips 

 seemed to eliminate most of the danger 

 of windthrow. After the cutting units, 

 as the blocks to be cut over were called, 

 were clear-cut, enough light could get 

 to the ground to favor the natural re- 

 seeding and survival of Douglas-fir 

 seedlings rather than those of minor 

 species. Patch cutting, or area selec- 

 tion, met the other requirements of the 

 ideal Douglas-fir silvicultural system. 

 It made less fire hazard. It tended to 

 minimize damage to watersheds, scenic 

 beauty, and wildlife. It favored salvage 

 logging. The more they tried it, the 

 better the foresters liked it. 



As the patch-cutting idea developed, 

 methods of laying out logging units 

 improved. At first, no one knew what 

 was the proper size for the cutting 

 patches. Foresters laid out units as 

 large as 120 to 200 acres, but patches 

 of that size did not seem to reseed com- 

 pletely from green timber around the 

 fringes; it has since been necessary to 

 plant some of those cut-over areas in 

 order to assure satisfactory stocking of 

 new trees. The policy now is to have 

 cutting patches that average from 40 

 to 100 acres each, with no part of the 

 cut-over area further than 1,000 feet 

 from green timber. With logging units 

 this small, it seems that natural re- 

 stocking will be assured in most cases. 



As additional insurance, the timber- 

 sale policy now is to assess a coopera- 

 tive deposit, under the Knutson-Van- 

 denberg Act, to provide for planting 

 and stand-improvement work on the 

 sale area after logging is completed. 

 If a logged-over area has not restocked 

 naturally after 5 years, it is replanted. 



Under the area-selection system, the 

 reserve timber often designated as 

 seed strips is left standing until the 

 cut-over patches are covered with trees 

 and until those new trees are old 

 enough to bear seed. Then the second 

 and third cuts can be made to complete 

 logging of the mature timber. 



Patch cutting involves certain diffi- 



